


dissolve

by fondleeds



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Drug Use, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 07:38:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14613012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fondleeds/pseuds/fondleeds
Summary: He doesn’t remember the first time Harry kissed him. It might have been at the bungalow, an empty vodka bottle spinning between five scared-shitless boys who knew nothing about anything at all. It might have been in a dark hotel room with the television glowing red-hot and grimy, spilling shadows between the wet space of their mouths. It might have been on the bus, on that couch, four in the morning with their eyes half-closed and Harry’s laptop ebbing Patsy Cline like a third pair of eyes.-A night in New York.





	dissolve

**Author's Note:**

> hi. this is my first time writing a zarry + canon-ish fic. please be kind.
> 
> playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/gonewilde/playlist/3yYYaXDypBvCY26hxyzPAG?si=AnUpQ4ffTdK1cQBVtV07YQ)
> 
> ♡

_last night you left me and slept_

_your own deep sleep. tonight you turn_

_and turn. i say,_

_“you and i will be together_

_till the universe dissolves.”_

_you mumble back things you thought of_

_when you were drunk._

 

_rumi_

 

-

 

He doesn’t quite remember a time without background noise. It was never just the band, either, but it became that in the end. Needing something beneath it all, a noise floor hum to stop his fingers twitching, to fill in the gaps that kept getting bigger. When he was a boy it just started as comfort, as a constant, as something familiar. The fan in the summertime, that fish tank buzz, the little fighting fish nudging their noses against the glass in the middle of the night, a _hum-hum-hum_ that snuck beneath his blankets and warmed his toes. 

That became the tour bus hum, the hotel hum, the club hum, the heartbeat _thump_ of constant movement. Don’t stay still. Don’t wait. Don’t stop or you’ll miss it. Don’t move too fast or it’ll fly by in a blink. Tucked beneath his bunk, wheels on the road, the television murmuring late into the night when one of them would inevitably fall asleep on the plush couch. He used to wake up if it got switched off, and he’d have to wait for his body to adjust to the quieter hush of the bus again.

Cigarettes, too. Not because of the hum, because of that sizzle, that _snick_ of a lighter, the paper burning away. Watching time truly burn right before his eyes. They weren’t supposed to smoke on the bus, but that became the only place they really did smoke when they could. He and Louis used to fall asleep afterwards, and he would purposely leave the television up loud. Louis always denied it, but he murmured when he slept, hummed, and sometimes Zayn didn’t sleep, just settled and enjoyed all those background hums together, the bus and the television and the breath of them all confined in that little space.

Fish in the tank. _Hum-hum-hum._

Tonight it’s a club. He’s wearing pink and he’s had a nice evening and he’s in the bathroom washing his hands. They’re starting to prune but nobody else has come in and he’s become enraptured with the detailing along the outside of the mirrors, copper wire that’s twisted into complex knots. It somehow feels very New York but very burrowed all at once. He’s sure he’s seen it before. The bathroom is a tile bubble bathed in gold light and pearl. 

Cupped in his palms, the water has gone warm, and he switches the tap off slowly so he can hear the _drip-drip-drip_ of little droplets hitting the porcelain. The pendants shine down like honey, like a soft moon. He can see it’s crescent shine on the smooth dips. He’s high. He wasn’t supposed to get high tonight. His phone buzzes in his pocket with a text. _Keep going,_ he thinks. He trails his finger along a droplet of water in idle fascination.

The walls _hum-hum-hum._ The door opens.

Zayn glances up.

A ghost stares back at him in the mirror.

“Hi,” Harry says.

-

He once read about childhood amnesia and thought it was terrifying that so many years of life could be long forgotten. Like water down a river, the natural flow and ebb of a wave, building up, curling into itself, breaking on the shore and fizzling away. Never to be seen again, never the same. The body of water remains, but that pattern of sea-spray, that exact glint of fish-scale shimmer under sunlight, gone forever. 

And who are we without memory. Who are we without that invisible string to connect all of those consciousnesses together. How could we be the same without the continuum of the self. Maybe we aren’t the same. Maybe that’s the point. 

He doesn’t remember the first time Harry kissed him. It might have been at the bungalow, an empty vodka bottle spinning between five scared-shitless boys who knew nothing about anything at all. It might have been in a dark hotel room with the television glowing red-hot and grimy, spilling shadows between the wet space of their mouths. It might have been on the bus, on that couch, four in the morning with their eyes half-closed and Harry’s laptop ebbing Patsy Cline like a third pair of eyes.

The body of water remains, but the pattern never settles the same.

Maybe they were drunk, perhaps high. Maybe that’s why Zayn can’t remember the moment. But he knows the feeling like the back of his hand, like permanent ink, like he knows his mother’s voice. That tentativeness, that holding of breath. The touch of palms. And then finally, lips on lips, lashes touching because to be so close was never close enough for them. He can recall thinking _oh_ and then _yes_ and then _I feel like I’ve known you forever_ but that was impossible because Zayn hadn’t even know himself for that long, only knew the version that remembered being bullied in primary school but couldn’t remember falling off his bike when he was learning to ride without training wheels. 

But then Harry’s tongue touched his teeth and he thought _oh_ and then _yes_ and then _I know you I know you I’ve known you so long._

Then he thought _this is a bad idea, we should stop._

“We should stop,” he said, right there in the bungalow, or in the dark, or on that couch. 

Harry just kissed him again, made Zayn’s toes curl so hard they started to cramp up. 

“I don’t want to,” Harry said. His thumb touched Zayn’s chin, and he kissed the corner of Zayn’s eye. Nobody had ever touched him like that before. “Just for tonight. Just for now.”

“Okay,” Zayn said, because that was okay. Just this once. Then it’d never be the same.

Never again.

-

“What are you doing here?” Zayn says, hands braced on the sink. 

Harry looks startlingly young, even with the facial hair and the immaculately tailored suit hanging from his shoulders. He looks nineteen and fresh-faced and malleable in the pearly light. He looks mad that the first thing Zayn’s said to him in what feels like years is something that sounds as hostile as _what are you doing here._

“I’m attending the party,” Harry says, face set, “because I was invited.”

“You didn’t even show up to the actual award ceremony,” Zayn says, turning the tap on again to fill the silence. _I sat through the whole shit-show. You weren’t nominated. Why are you here. Why am I here. We haven’t spoken since Paris._

“I was busy,” Harry says, because of course. Of course. 

“It was riveting,” Zayn says. He hates the way his heart thumps when Harry’s mouth twitches. He hates him. 

“I’m sure,” Harry says. He tucks a short curl behind his ear. Zayn has never seen his hair like this, so trimmed. It’s starting to grow back. He looks so nineteen it hurts. “Anyway. I’ve come to piss, so. If you don’t mind.”

“Polite as ever,” Zayn mutters. Harry just purses his lips and waits for Zayn to avert his eyes. The water is still running, splashing up and dotting the sink. 

Then Harry is beside him, pumping sweet-smelling soap into his palms and foaming them up. It’s purple, the kind of lavender smell that gives Zayn a headache even when he isn’t three sheets to the wind. Harry’s suit is dark, not quite black and not quite blue, gold trim and fragile cufflinks. Posh prick. 

“The pink is a nice touch,” Harry says, nodding to Zayn’s own suit and obviously noticing his staring. Zayn cuts his eyes away.

“Thought I’d try something new,” he says. 

“It looks good.”

“Thanks.”

They stand in silence, staring at the moonshine sinks, at the copper mirrors. 

Harry’s phone starts to ring. 

“Nice seeing you,” he says, offhand as he takes the call and leaves. Zayn barely gets a chance to say goodbye before the door opens again and he’s gone. 

Nearly three years since they’ve seen each other in person. Zayn swallows, stares down at his shoes, and tries not to think about it.

-

Like childhood, he often finds he doesn’t remember much from _X Factor_ , from the first tour, from everything in between. Maybe like childhood, those were simpler times. Naive times. Five boys funnelled like warm butter into the productive casing of an inescapable record deal and the giddy promise of international stardom. It was fun. He had four new best friends. He got to sing. He got to record in a real studio. He got to buy his family nice gifts for their birthdays. 

The stage was little and the venues were little but to them it all felt so very big and spectacular and so brand new. And wasn’t it amazing that they were doing it together, fumbling through each unsurety with ease because if they all felt it, then it mustn’t have been as bad as they thought. It was good, it was generic and easy and they rarely slept but they had so much energy that it didn’t matter, hyped up on the screaming and the music and seeing all these new places, places that Zayn never thought he’d get to visit.

He’d never been on a plane, before One Direction. Now he despises them. 

Maybe he doesn’t remember much from the early years because it really was like warm butter under sunlight, melting and sliding easily into place. Malleable and natural. There was little push and pull. They went to America and signed albums for hours and a girl fainted when she held his hand. He had four new bestfriends that had become like his brothers. 

He had Harry. He had them all, but Harry felt so different. Harry had Louis, and that was different, too. But it was there. It was always there, whether Zayn can remember it or not. 

Harry was always the baby of the group, and maybe that was partly their fault, too, the way they cradled him, huddled in so close that they couldn’t breathe in the beginning of it all. Keep Harry safe. Keep Harry happy. _Harry-Harry-Harry_. Harry with his doe eyes and his hair and his lovely voice. Harry with his wet mouth and his slender fingers and all those tiny details that Zayn shouldn’t have focused on but did, because he had Harry and perhaps Harry had him, even more so.

Zayn always waited for him. Louis was the one that made Harry laugh those big guffawing laughs, he made them all laugh like that, and he’d have Harry in tears, in stitches, choking on air from laughing so much. Louis made Harry squirm and go beet-red and teased him until they’d both be exhausted from it. 

And then it’d be one in the morning, and Zayn would be up listening to the _hum-hum-hum_ of the bus and a pair of cold palms would touch his back through the curtain of his bunk to make him jump, and there he was, with his pink cheeks and his bitten down smile, hair askew, bright-eyed. _Hello,_ he’d whisper, nudging himself into that tiny little space until Zayn’s ribs were crushed and his neck was tilted at the most awkward angle, but Harry was there and so warm and he always smelt lovely, like still damp shampoo, like summer. 

“Did you have a nice day?” He always asked Zayn that. Zayn always said yes. It was so nice having Harry there, even when he shot up like a beanstalk, all lanky limbs and thin wrists and long torso, crushing himself down to fit into Zayn’s bunk, just to ask him if his day was nice.

The gaps were so small then that they were non-existent, and it was there that Zayn discovered the thing that made his entire body melt away into nothing, that made him shut off slow and steady. On those nights, the curtain drawn, all that warmth trapped between them, Harry would tilt forward into Zayn’s neck to sleep. The dull hum of his breath, the puff of it hitting Zayn’s neck; it felt like all those lost memories bundled up, like all Zayn had to do was breathe in time and it’d slot into place, right there for him to see. 

He touched his knuckles to Harry’s stomach to make him laugh, right before they’d fall asleep, and sometimes their fingers would stay tucked together. Sometimes Harry kissed his neck. Sometimes Zayn wished he’d tilt his head up and kiss his lips the way they did that one time, only once, just that night, and then sometimes turned into all the time, and then the second album dropped and they were touring again and Harry got drunk and climbed into Zayn’s bunk on the road between Cardiff and Dublin and kissed him so hard they both saw stars.

-

_have you stuck your head in the sink and drowned ???_

Zayn thumbs at the side of his phone. He’s still in the bathroom. He’s turned the tap off at least. 

Each time he breathes the phantom scent of Harry’s cologne hits, and the goosebumps that break out across the back of his neck make him feel queasy.

**_still alive, unfortunately_ **

_not funny. come have a daiquiri with me before i get kicked out for requesting beyonce again_

**_harry is here_ **

There’s no response to that. With a sigh, he pushes back out into the darkness of the club, the afterparty still in full swing, faces he knows each time he fixes his gaze somewhere new. Gigi is at the bar frowning down at her phone.

“You better hope the wind doesn’t change,” Zayn says lamely. 

“Is he really here?” she says, ignoring his attempt to deflect and handing him an already made daiquiri. It smells too strong. 

“I spoke to him.”

“Oh, _shit_.”

“Yeah. He was, like. Different. But still the same.”

“Still an arsehole?”

Zayn looks away. “He was never an arsehole, Gigi.”

“You said he was.”

“I was angry,” Zayn says. “I’m not angry anymore.”

“So, what? Did he apologize? Or did you just get chummy over all the fond memories–”

“He said he liked my suit,” Zayn cuts in, taking a strained sip of his drink. Too much rum. “Then he took a phone call and disappeared. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Right,” Gigi says, unconvinced. “At least he had the decency to be civil.”

“We lived in each others back pockets for five years,” Zayn says dully. “We know how to hold a conversation with each other.”

“I thought you said you didn’t talk much,” Gigi frowns. “That you hated each other, the last year.”

Across the room, under the dark strobe lights of this pretentious club, Zayn sees him again, suit jacket discarded, the top buttons of his white shirt undone, a fresh drink in hand. He looks in his element, he always did, charming and approachable. Zayn can’t see who he’s talking to, but he knows Harry is bored, smile waning each time attention is diverted, taking frequent sips of his fruity drink until the glass is empty.

He looks towards the bar, possibly for an escape. He finds Zayn instead. Zayn tips back the remainder of his daiquiri. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Harry watches silently.

“Hate is a strong word,” Zayn says, but Gigi has already left. It’s just him standing alone at the bar, pinned in place. 

Harry begins to push forward through the crowd.

-

Hotels have always been, always will be, liminal. Inside those pristine rooms, curtains drawn, the world exists only within. Country, city, street, all disposable variables. There’s nothing but the paint on the walls, the detailing on the ceiling around the hanging diamond-lights, the sheets softer than a dream. All of it a dream. A fantasy. With the lights off it’s just another dark space shifting through time. With the lights off it’s easy to feel untouchable.

They sold out five shows at the O2. It might have been one of the longest periods of time they’d stayed off the bus, in the one place, at any given time. Zayn was grateful for it, the familiar place to go and rest after each show. He couldn’t remember being this tired during the first tour, not so soon, not a month and some change into something that would have them moving until November. Nine months on the road. Nine months on their little bus. Nine months of Zayn looking at Harry and Harry looking at Zayn, both of them trying to decipher the magnetic pull they couldn’t ignore anymore.

Harry kissed him quiet on the way to Dublin, kissed him so hard and so fast that Zayn couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t time for soft sighs or _we should stop_ or anything else. It was just their mouths, just Harry curled up so close that the tiny bunk felt like a furnace, like if they pulled the curtain back the whole bus would go down in flames. And then it was over. Harry slid out and turned on the television and Zayn stayed up all night listening to him breathe heavily once he fell asleep on the couch. 

They went out, after the first show in London. Like most details, Zayn doesn’t remember the name of the club, the street, anything about what the place looked like. But he felt it all in his chest, felt that pulse of bass and the wetness of liquor on his neck. Felt Harry’s eyes following him back and forth like a pendulum as Zayn went between the bar and the dancefloor. Maybe he could drink it away. Maybe he could sweat it out. Find a girl with long hair and glossy lips and soft thighs.

But Harry had that, too. And Harry was right there, across the room, watching Zayn with dark eyes and a pink straw between his teeth, curls gone limp from sweat. He doesn’t know why, but Zayn imagined what he would smell like, in that moment, so raw from being on stage, boyish and heady, like coke and dark rum because that’s what Harry always drunk after shows when he wanted to make a mess of himself. Like fruit and spice. Like everything Zayn could want to taste.

They didn’t touch. Just watched each other. Back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth.

By the time they got back to the hotel Zayn was half-hard and couldn’t bare to look to his side, to where Harry was propped up drowsily against the window, buttons of his shirt coming undone. He was burning up. He was going to burst into flames, if he didn’t touch. He always wanted to touch Harry so badly that it terrified him, but he had to tell himself they couldn’t. It would ruin everything. It wouldn’t be smart. 

_There are other warm bodies around. You could have anyone, anything you wanted. Keep Harry safe. Keep Harry happy. Harry-Harry-Harry._

In the hall, once the lift pinged and Paul begun to herd them into their rooms, Harry’s fingers brushed Zayn’s wrist, and he knew, then, that it was over. His shiny defences were really just castles made of sand, Harry the swell that crashed down and seeped in through the cracks until the foundations crumbled, until all that water came rushing in at once, too fast for either of them to stop. 

In the darkness of Harry’s room, they simply stood with their hands touching. It was moonlight and Harry’s eyes shiny and his lips parted and wet. And then those lips were close, on Zayn’s chin, feather light on his neck, long fingers curling like a question in the damp fabric at Zayn’s stomach.

“I don’t know what this is,” Harry whispered between them. He pressed his forehead against Zayn’s neck, breathed. “I don’t know what–. I don’t know, Zayn.”

“Just for tonight,” Zayn said, and Harry’s fingers curled tighter, this little breath puffing out against Zayn’s collarbone, so warm. “Just for now.”

“Okay,” Harry said, right into Zayn’s mouth.

It was so soft. Zayn still doesn’t know how anything between two people could be that gentle, but it was, because Harry showed him that night. They were both so drunk they kept shifting their feet so they didn’t fall, and yet not even the pent up desperation that felt like it had been building for months was enough to make Zayn bite at him, to sink his teeth in the way he wanted to in the club. It was new here, different. 

Harry curled his tongue gently against Zayn’s, started walking them backwards. 

How could it be that he could touch somebody and know them so well, how could he be touched in turn and have it feel like the first time anybody had ever shown him any sense of affection. But that was always it, when he touched Harry. He slid off his shirt, kissed his tan chest, _I’ve known you forever._ Opened him with his fingers until his eyes were damp, _I’ve known you forever._ Pressed close enough to cry, close enough to mold them together, to intertwine every little detail of every self they’d ever been. 

Zayn knew it then, with Harry flushed and gasping beneath him, that this couldn’t be just a clumsy, drunk fuck between mates. This was not just for tonight, not just for now. It had never been just for now. It couldn’t be, not when pressing into Harry felt the way it did, not when Harry said his name like a prayer, over and over, muffled between their wet mouths.

It was too late to take it back.

Down the hall, downstairs, there were cameramen following them, filming their every move for whatever ridiculous thing their label wanted them to do next. But there, that perfect, unforgettable memory was always so untouchable. They were truly alone in that hotel room, hidden away, and that was always what Zayn wanted for Harry, Harry who cried when he read the things people said about him online, Harry who locked himself in a toilet for hours after their performance on _Red or Black_ because he was too embarrassed to come out, too worried he’d ruined everything, Harry who had a heart so big he gave too much of it away and sometimes didn’t get those precious pieces back. 

Harry who stared up at him with stars in his fucking eyes, who held Zayn’s hips so hard they bruised, kissed his mouth so hard it tasted metallic, who breathed him in, whispered _Zayn-Zayn-Zayn_ until he couldn’t speak at all. 

_I’ll keep you safe. I’ll make it okay._

-

They’ve been standing silently for a few minutes now, Zayn facing the party, Harry with his elbows leant on the bar. He keeps tapping his nails against the glass, shifting it so the ice clicks together. Dark rum and coke. Zayn should have known.

He can feels the heat of eyes staring. It would be impossible to avoid, especially here, especially with Harry in the room. All eyes follow him, all these people begging to get just a piece of that magic. In the dark, Harry’s skin is dewy and tan. Maybe from being on the road, from a holiday somewhere with bright sandy beaches and palm trees. The lights play on the sweat of his cheeks, tints of red and blue. Though his face his set, Zayn’s known him too long for that front to work. 

He knows Harry’s little ticks, knows he’s thinking of something to say. He keeps fiddling with his watch, clasping and unclasping it over and over, eyes drifting over each bottle behind them on the bar, pretending to read the labels. The familiarity of it has Zayn’s knees heavy, like he might just sink into himself right here and now to avoid whatever blow Harry will inevitably gift him with once he’s done with his false pondering. 

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he says, staring down at the bar. There it is.

“Why does it matter?” Zayn says. Of course it matters. They both know it matters, but if Harry is going to open the conversation with something like that, Zayn’s going to pass that ball right back.

Harry shrugs, takes a slow sip of his drink. “We’ve been avoiding each other for a while now.”

“I never avoided you,” Zayn says, faster than he means to. Harry glances at him, unconvinced.

“I saw you, at the pre-show party a few years ago,” Harry confesses. He puts his drink down on the bar. “And you saw me, too.”

“What did you expect me to do?” Zayn hisses, jaw twitching. “What, Harry? You’re upset I didn’t come over and gossip?”

“No,” Harry says flatly. “I didn’t expect anything.”

Zayn rolls his eyes and looks away. They fall back into tense silence, fiddling with their cufflinks and their watches and shifting their weight. It’s late but the party is still thriving, the floor shiny with spilled drinks. It smells like smoke and heavy hearts and too much. He isn’t sure what of, but it’s there. Just too much. 

“I can go,” Harry says, awkward in a way he never is. He’s still staring down into his glass like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. 

It hurts, to hear that. There was a time when Zayn couldn’t watch Harry leave a room without wanting to pull him right back through the door again, a time when a minute without him felt like far too long. Now they’ve standing here as strangers in perfect suits, unable to look each other in the eye, unable to be in the same space as each other without wondering if they’re causing offence. 

“You don’t have to,” Zayn says, just as awkward. They’re both so stilted, and he wonders if it’s because they’re both lying. Because what Harry really meant to say was _can I stay_ and Zayn was meant to say _yes._

“It’s late,” Harry says, actually being that much of an arsehole to look at down at his watch in the dark, and Zayn has never hated anyone more than this, so hot inside him that it burns. “I guess I’ll bump into you next time we’ve both got an excuse to put on a suit.”

_Please don’t go. Please don’t leave. Please let me look at you for just a second longer before I forget all the details of your face._

“Sure,” Zayn says. He looks away. “See you around.”

Harry lingers, like he’s about to speak again. Then he’s gone. Zayn watches his back as he slips through the shadows, slips right through Zayn’s fingers one more time.

-

Paris became theirs to conquer.

They had over a week break after Manchester, and Zayn fled, burrowed back home with his family to escape. He still had thumbprints on his hips, though, still had the everpresent taste of Harry in his mouth, no matter how much force he used when he brushed his teeth, how much soap he used to try and wash it all away. Harry was under his skin, completely and undeniably borrowed between the gaps of Zayn’s ribs. 

And then there was Paris, Paris with the bright lights and the view from the hotel room, Paris with the Seine reflecting a purple sunset, cigarettes in the gutters and crumbled pastry in their mouths and Harry spread out naked on the gold-lined sheets of their hotel room, the chandelier bathing him, an angel floating through the clouds. Zayn told him to keep away, that night, told him they needed the space to breathe.

The knock came soon after two, Zayn still awake and shaking from the show, waiting for the five a.m knock that told them it was time to move on. He’d been smoking on the balcony, had _Dark Side of the Moon_ playing through his phone, and then Harry had knocked, had poked his head inside without waiting for Zayn to get up and let him in.

They locked eyes, through a slip in the curtain, through the paned glass of the window that seperated the balcony from the room.

“It’s beautiful here,” Harry said, once he’d snuck inside, leant against the frame and looking out to the city. “It’d be a fun place to get lost in.”

Zayn lit another cigarette, blew a gentle ring. “I’ll take you on a holiday, when this is all done.”

“Yeah?” Harry said, and he smiled in that slow way he always did for Zayn, just for Zayn. A gradual curl, lips ruby wet. 

“Yeah,” Zayn said. “We’ll come back for the New Year. Get so lost we forget our own names.”

He couldn’t stop thinking about it, then. Harry in the Louvre, dressed head to toe in black with that gallery light bathing him pale. Harry in the summertime on the Champs-Élysées, all silk fabric and expensive wine and Zayn’s rings on his fingers. Harry walking along the Seine at dusk, sunset bouncing that pink light back to his cheeks, huddled beneath the amber glow of a streetlight. _Harry-Harry-Harry._ Just them and the city and nothing else, drunk off each other, not caring where they end up.

Harry’s smile widened, bright and a little loopy, both of them still half-drunk from post-show drinks. And then he was in Zayn’s lap, legs either side of his waist, arms lazy and gentle around Zayn’s neck.

“Can I have some?” he whispered, when Zayn turned away and exhaled smoke out the side of his mouth.

“No, babe,” Zayn said. Pressed his thumb to Harry’s hip. That was new, too, but he couldn’t stop himself sometimes, when Harry had him trapped like this. 

“Please,” Harry breathed, lips on the shell of Zayn’s ear, on his neck, between his collarbones. 

Zayn spread his palm over Harry’s ribs, stroked over his nipple to make him shift. “‘S not good for you.”

“You do it all the time,” Harry complained. He’d started to rock his hips, almost subconsciously. Out in the open like this, this brand new city before them, Zayn almost let him.

“Let’s go inside,” he said, stubbing out the cigarette clumsily before Harry could ask again. _Keep you safe. Keep you close. Close to me._ “I missed you.”

Harry paused, pulled back to look Zayn in the eye. Something passed over his face, and then he softened, cupped Zayn’s cheeks and warmed their mouths together.

“Missed you, too,” he said, shy. 

That’s how it remained, how Paris left them. It was fun to be tucked away. To be hidden. Harry was his secret, and Zayn was his, and they confided only in each other. After that, in every city, Zayn couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways Harry could be his. He thought about running away, the two of them disappearing into the night, never to be seen again. He thought about taking Harry somewhere untouchable, somewhere paparazzi couldn’t follow them, somewhere private and far away. 

Harry asked him one night, sweat still shining his rosy cheeks, sheets pooled on the dips of his back as he leant up over Zayn on his elbows, pressed a kiss to his lips with his still-warm mouth. 

“What’re you thinking about, hm?” he said, deciding to just lie over Zayn completely instead of hovering. It was second nature, for Zayn’s hands to find his hips, pushing up into the delicate bones there, stroking over skin. Harry’s lashes fluttered.

“If you could go anywhere, where would you go?” Zayn asked.

Harry blinked down at him, confused. His hair was an absolute mess, eyes hazy from the sex, and he looked so beautiful, there, peering at Zayn with the pearly light from a new chandelier, a new room, pouring over the soft curves of his shoulders. 

“I’m happy here,” he said, like it was a given, like he was surprised that Zayn didn’t already know. 

Zayn didn’t know where they were. He’d lost track of the cities, by then. He was drifting into sleep and Harry wouldn’t stop touching him. He thought he’d die if Harry ever stopped touching him.

“What about you?” Harry said, after the silence stretched on. He bumped their noses together, inhaled when Zayn caught his lips. “Where would you go?”

 _Wherever you are._ He almost said it, but that was too much. That wasn’t the type of thing you say to a friend. Because that’s what they still were, even through all of it. They were friends, first, even if it didn’t feel like it. To the world, to everyone else, maybe sometimes to each other on those nights they were cramped on the bus and didn’t touch, just watched.

“Doesn’t matter,” Zayn said quietly, rolling them so they were on their sides. Harry frowned at him, touched his knuckles to Zayn’s stomach, his favourite place. 

“It matters,” Harry pressed, and Zayn rolled his eyes lightly, the same way he always did when Harry tried to press him to do anything, to speak up in interviews, to sing the way he wanted to until Julian told him to stop being a prick, like it was his civic duty to make sure they all took their turn to answer each question they were thrown, to divide time equally. Sometimes it was jarring, because Harry was their baby, theirs to take care of first. 

They never learned how to let each other grow.

“I’d go to the moon,” Zayn said, laughing when Harry shoved at his shoulder. “I’d bring you back some cheese.”

“You’re fucking ridiculous,” Harry said, biting down on his smile, trying his best to look pissed off. Zayn kissed the expression right off his face. Kissed him until Harry was pulling their bodies together, hitching his leg over Zayn’s hip and guiding his hand down.

They turned off the lights, breathed hot into each other’s necks. 

A far away dream. Another one of a kind wave.

-

It’s a truly freezing New York night. The alley is grimy and slick, but it’s tucked away at least. He can hear the commotion from the front of the club, paps lingering and waiting for guests to leave, boxy black cars pulling up and down the street. Zayn reaches for his cigarettes, fumbles to light one fast enough. He feels like the raw end of a pulse right now, too drunk for the amount of work his brain is trying to do, slowly coming down. The first inhalation is dust in his lungs, but it’s familiar, strikes the way he wants it to, and he won’t pretend it offers any sort of warmth, but thinking it does is enough to try and distract him from the cold air prickling the back of his neck.

It smells like damp smoke already, like puddled storm water, and when he finally glances up from his shoes, meaning to look to where the light is caressing the bricks far down the lane, there are shiny eyes already watching him back in the dark, another firefly dot raised to plush lips, paused.

“Are you following me?” Harry muses, but the joke falls flat and thin between them. Zayn watches Harry bring his fag to his lips, inhaling easily, tucking his face away to exhale. In the dark, his suit looks like it’s part of the shadows. 

There’s something still, even now, even after all this time, that makes Zayn’s fingers twitch, seeing the cigarette between Harry’s own. He almost starts forward to smack it out of his hands. Harry used to call him a hypocrite, first as a joke, then to bite back at him during the stupid fights they’d get into. It’s true, though. It’s the most hypocritical thing, that he wants to burn the pack sticking out of Harry’s pocket, yet he burst out through the door and almost tripped over himself just to light a butt of his own. 

It just doesn’t seem right, Harry with his shoulders hunched in, one hand in his pocket, the other raised to his mouth, smoke pouring heady and hot out into the night. 

“No,” Zayn swallows. All the moisture in his mouth has dried up. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for my car,” Harry says. He shifts, tucks his suit jacket closer around himself, and takes a slow, unbothered drag. “Is that okay with you?”

“Don’t be a prick,” Zayn mutters, cutting his eyes away. His own cigarette is burning uselessly between his fingers, time floating up and away. 

“I’m not,” Harry says. “You asked, mate.”

“I hate it when you call me that.”

“I know.”

Zayn flicks his gaze up. Harry hasn’t moved, is still watching Zayn intently. Everything about this is so blue-dark and heavy, laced with this impending doom that Zayn can’t place. But he feels it, feels it like being swallowed whole by sleep after a long night out, that medicine-like, syrupy slow blackness that crowds the vision when the body gives up. Harry parts his mouth, lets the smoke go like a sigh, doesn’t break his eyes away. 

“I thought you were going to quit,” Harry says casually, like he’s trying to strike up a fucking conversation, like they didn’t have that argument two and a half years ago, in that tiny bathroom, ready to claw at each other. Zayn clenches his jaw.

“I didn’t realize you’d started,” he bites. 

Harry flicks away ash lazily. “I’m a social smoker. That’s all.”

“There’s nobody else here,” Zayn grits out, gesturing between them. That cigarette was lit before Zayn ever stepped through the door.

And then Harry smiles, close-mouthed, eyes averted in the dark. It’s so tiny Zayn hardly notices it, but that smug, dark look in Harry’s eyes, the one Zayn could pick up from a mile off, makes everything around them go quiet. Because Harry must have known that Zayn would need to escape, that he’d follow Harry without even realizing it.

Zayn watches him now, watches the smoke floating around their heads, tinted navy and gold, watches Harry’s thin silhouette and wants to grab his shoulders and shake him and ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, why he’s here, why he’s back to fuck with Zayn’s head one last time, why he never fucking listened to anything Zayn said.

He feels short of breath, so suddenly blinded by a frustration he hasn’t let free for so long. By guilt. He always thought it was his fault, that first time he caught Harry with a cigarette to his mouth, the way he’d gone wide-eyed and scampered away after Zayn plucked it right from between his teeth. He’d never been so mad, seeing that, seeing Harry obscured by smoke. He was supposed to keep him safe.

“Put it out,” Zayn says quietly. Some nights, in the clinical, cold darkness of whatever bed he finds himself in, it’s the misplaced guilt he thinks about the most, the flush on Harry’s cheeks, his watery eyes when Zayn told him to never, ever go through his things again, the way he snatched the pack out of Harry’s trembling fingers. He’d treated him like a child, and he’ll never forgive himself for that, the way he started to burn the bridges between them before the end was ever in sight. The way Harry purposely fought back to tease Zayn into talking to him, even if they were shouting and fighting and saying things they didn’t mean. 

Harry throws the cigarette onto the damp ground. They listen to it fizzle, waiting for the explosion.

-

It’s incredible that nine months managed to feel like both the fastest moments of his life, and the slowest. How time stretched and broke and jumped ahead, how it sometimes took hours for days to pass, days for a singular minute to tick over. He couldn’t wait to never sing again, to never have makeup smudged up over his cheeks, sat with his hair styled and his collar prim and clean, lights shining down on them so they could be asked the same generic questions over and over, questions about who they were dating, who their celebrity crush was, never about the music.

The album was finished by then, those fatal last few days in Melbourne, right before they were set for Japan. The end in sight, close enough to touch.

He didn’t go out that night. He still hadn’t gotten used to the shift in the temperature, the fact that they were on the other side of the world again. The air-conditioner was blasting, _hum-hum-hum_ , pulsing out into the dark room. Lucid, falling in and out of sleep, he didn’t hear the door open, he didn’t see the hallway light shift and cut through the dark, but he knew it was Harry, knew something was wrong when the bed dipped and Harry didn’t whisper _hello_ and curl up too close. 

Harry had been quiet all day, quiet for the last few. They weren’t avoiding each other, but they weren’t exactly speaking, and Zayn suspects neither of them really knew why. Nothing had happened. But having Harry there, perched on the edge of his bed, it made Zayn’s hands twitch with a need to have him closer. There could be no grey areas, no middle ground. It was none of him or all of him, and he didn’t want to push Harry away.

“Z?” Harry whispered, tentative. He never called him that, never, just said _Zayn. Zayn-Zayn-Zayn_. 

Zayn shifted to let him know he was awake, too tired to speak. He suspected that Harry was drunk, suspicions confirmed when Harry finally pulled back the sheet and started to shift closer. He smelt like rum, but also something off, something sick and strange, and Zayn opened his eyes slowly. It was no use in the dark. He could only see the shadows of Harry’s face. The tears shining his eyes.

Harry pushed his way under Zayn’s arm, his face against his chest, and Zayn gently shifted his fingers through Harry’s hair, cradled the back of his head. His hair was damp, still, wet from a shower, skin warm. They didn’t speak for so long. He just let Harry rest, let him brush his knuckles against his stomach and swallow heavily, the blankets capturing all the heat between them until sweat started to dampen the skin of Zayn’s neck. 

“Okay?” he whispered, lips brushing the crown of Harry’s head. He was burning up.

Harry shook his head no, and Zayn pulled back slightly to peer down at him. Harry wouldn’t let him, kept his face hidden away.

“You weren’t at dinner,” Zayn said. 

“‘M sick,” Harry whispered miserably, sniffling. He curled up closer, shoved a leg between Zayn’s for comfort. “I threw up tonight, in the middle of _Rock Me_.”

“Babe,” Zayn sighed, brushing sweaty curls back off Harry’s temple. “Nobody saw.”

“I watched a video, already,” Harry continued, and he was all wobbly and warbly, the way he got when he tried to hide how upset he was. “They could see.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zayn said.

“Everything matters,” Harry said bitterly, and Zayn blinked down at him in the dark, still half-asleep, trying to process that this was Harry in front of him, his Harry, face wet with poorly hidden tears, eyes puffy and sore. 

“What’s going on,” Zayn said, softer, dragging his hands back through Harry’s hair again so he would look up. Because this wasn’t like Harry. Harry didn’t fake being sick and he didn’t throw up on stage and he didn’t ignore Zayn and curl into himself. He shared everything, took up every nook of space and filled up their lives with his thoughts. But he was here, he was hiding away into Zayn’s chest and something was wrong. Something was wrong.

Harry broke.

Muffled, hiccuping sobs, face screwed up. In the dark, Zayn held him close and hushed him, brushed his thumbs over his cheeks to try and wipe his tears away, over his brows to try and soothe him, over the bumps of acne scars because he never washed off his makeup properly even though Zayn constantly chased him around with a cloth when they came off stage. He almost expected Harry to grapple at him, to tug at his clothes and shift beneath the confines of the blankets, to huff and sob and get mad.

The thing that hurt the most was that he didn’t move at all, just hid his face away more, shoulders shaking with tired trembles. 

“Look at me,” Zayn whispered, and he pulled back enough to cup Harry’s hot cheeks in his palms, to press his lips to his forehead over and over. “Harry.”

“I got a call,” Harry sniffed. He held onto Zayn’s wrists, pulled them closer together. “I got a call, about her. I have to got to New York, Zayn.”

“It’ll just be a few dates–” 

“You don’t _get_ it,” Harry said, almost a shout as he pushed away and sat up, the blankets going with him, all the cold air in the room finally seeping in. Zayn sat up too, turned on the lamp and balked when he saw the look in Harry’s eyes, the way the blush of yellow light caught in the mist there. 

“Babe–”

“We were supposed to go to Paris.” 

Harry didn’t look at him as he said it, whispered it, like it was a secret he didn’t want Zayn to hear. He played with his fingers and kept his head low, tiny pearls dripping off his chin, off his nose when he tucked his knees into his chest. Zayn sat there in silence. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew what Harry was trying to say. What he meant, what the quiet between them implied. 

“I don’t want to go to New York,” Harry said. “I hate it there. I want to go with you.”

“We can go another time,” Zayn said. “We can go whenever you like.”

“Right now?” Harry said, so softly. He finally looked over, and the vulnerability there was a kick to Zayn’s chest, made him reach out without thinking, to press a warm kiss to Harry’s forehead in a way he hadn’t before, cupping his cheeks in his palms and just kissing him there over and over, down along his brows and his temples and along his chin, tasting the salt of tears, his heart threatening to break through his ribs.

“I’ve already booked the flights,” Zayn said, lips pressed to Harry’s warm cheek. “We’ll stay at the Ritz. We’ll cruise on the Seine and I’ll take pictures of you on film and I’ll get them developed right there in Paris. We can pin them up on the windows and smoke on the balcony and I’ll get up before sunrise to bring you fresh croissants for breakfast. I’ll wake you up with my mouth on your cock–”

“Perfect,” Harry said, breathless as he laughed and cried all at once.

“We’ll walk around for so long that everybody forgets who we are. We’ll walk around for so long we forget ourselves. Just a little couple walking around in a big city. I’ll write our names on a lock and pin it to that bridge. I’d swallow the fucking key if you asked me to, Harry.”

He didn’t know what he was saying, just that he couldn’t stop, that he felt frantic and light-headed and flushed with heat from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes, and Harry was staring at him with this look in his eyes. Zayn brushed away another stray tear and tried not to shake, tried not to think about the way he’d just called them a couple, the way Harry kept staring.

They weren’t a couple. They were friends. They were friends who kissed and fucked and fucked each other up. They were friends that couldn’t spend a day apart without at least texting the other. They were friends who now, it seemed, couldn’t stand the thought of seeing other people.

It was terrifying, what he felt for Harry in that moment, but all of it was true. He’d do anything Harry asked of him, anything.

“Come here,” Zayn said, finally pressed a dry kiss to Harry’s mouth, holding his jaw with light fingers as they kissed slow, lips wet from his crying. “I’ll see you after, okay? I’ll see you whenever you want.”

Harry circled Zayn’s wrists then, pulled his hands from his cheeks and just twined their fingers between them atop the fluffy sheets. The lamplight caught all the soft edges of Harry’s face, blushed his nose and his temples in warm gold, frosted the edge of his lashes, made his cheeks look like they’d been coated in dew and fuzz, like something out of a painting, something that Zayn wanted to keep forever. 

And then Harry finally looked up, and Zayn knew he loved him. That maybe Harry loved him back. They’d never say it out loud, never directly, but that moment was enough. It was enough for Zayn to know. 

The body of water remains, but the pattern never settles the same.

“I want to go home,” Harry said softly, blinking tiredly, already starting to settle back into Zayn’s pillows. “I love this so much, but I want to go home.”

“We’re almost there,” Zayn said. He leant down, kissed Harry’s forehead, then just left their faces resting close. “I’m so proud of you, for everything. You’re a star, Harry.”

_My star. My Harry. Please don’t cry._

“You, too.”

-

His phone is burning a hole in his pocket. In the back of the cab, dark city lights slipping through the windows intermittently, he has to keep his hands between his thighs to stop them from shaking. The heater is blasting hot air against his shins but he still feels numb from standing out in the cold so long, alone in the alley with his phone cupped in his hands, waiting for it to buzz.

And then it had, and he’d lit another cigarette while he read the address over and over, like maybe if he did the words would stop making sense. 

Now he’s here, huddled in the back of a dim cab with his head ducked, stomach heaving with nerves, with unsurety, with the weight of Harry’s stare in that disgusting alley. Harry, who left without a word, yet still knew that Zayn would stay. Just like Zayn knew, after all this time, that to be patient with Harry was sometimes the only way to break through to the otherside of whatever stubborn demeanor he’d decided to put up that day. 

The hotel they pull up in front of isn’t what he’d expected from Harry. It’s in a dark, deserted part of the city, a lowly concrete building with rusted fire-escapes and a buzzer at the door instead of a doorman dressed in a prim suit, and then he realizes, the more he stares up blanky from out the cab window, that this is a set of apartments, not a hotel. 

Harry stays in LA. Zayn stays in New York. That’s how things worked out between them. Heat crawls slow and steady up Zayn’s neck as he gazes up at the dimly lit windows. He wonders how many times Harry has been close without him knowing. How many times they’ve been tucked in this city together, just a few blocks away, unbeknownst to each other. The flush on his neck pulses up into his cheeks, another dull kick of frustration, because they promised they wouldn’t overlap like this. Harry promised to let Zayn go.

It’s drizzling, when he finally manages to slip out onto the street, rain dotting his cheeks and the tops of his shoulders. He keeps his head low. Presses his thumb to the room number Harry text him. There’s a moment of pause that almost stretches too long, a moment in which Zayn almost runs, but then the door unlatches and he has to go in, hands still shaking as he reaches for the handle.

He takes the stairs to buy time. To try and work away the jittery feeling in his chest.

Harry’s lost his suit jacket again, and his hair is messy, like he’s been running his hands through it, the product all wonky and misplaced. No watch, no rings. Barefoot. It’s like he’s lost his armour, like he’s nineteen and bright. They simply stare at each other through the crack in the door, and then Harry clears his throat and lets Zayn in.

Again, not what Zayn was expecting. Harry always tended to drift towards opulent places, high ceilings and art on the walls and beds so soft it made both their backs ache. The room they’re in now isn’t like those places. It feels barely lived in, wardrobe empty save for a few silky shirts, lip balm and a charger on the nightstand. Walls bare. The bed is small, a measly double with rumpled sheets, unmade. The only personal thing in the room is Harry’s moleskine by the pillows, an old poetry book with a cracked cover on a shelf. 

“You live here?” Zayn says slowly, trying to piece it together.

“No,” Harry shrugs. “I bought it years ago as an investment, but they never got around to renovating. I saw the plans and everything. It was going to be beautiful.”

Zayn can’t figure out if he’s lying or not. This is an unfamiliar place, with an unfamiliar Harry, and they’re just standing in the middle of the room together awkwardly. Zayn has no idea what he’s doing here. Neither does Harry, it seems. 

“Want a drink?” Harry says, brushing past Zayn to step into the tiny corner of kitchen space. It’s clinical, not even an old water glass drying on the sink. The benchtop is spotless. 

“Okay,” Zayn says. He scratches at the back of his neck. 

Harry presses a plastic cup of coke into his hands, half-smiling. “Sorry. I don’t have any glasses.”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you wearing Tom Ford?”

Zayn’s brain stutters for a moment. It takes him a second, to get what Harry’s saying. His neck prickles.

“Yeah,” he says softly. 

“Thought so.” Harry brushes past him again, to the tiny sliding door that opens to a dull concrete balcony, two broken wicker chairs clustered around a cracked pot plant that’s been turned upside down to serve as a table. 

Zayn stands frozen, pulse beating in the tips of his fingers. He’s been wearing that cologne for years, and the memory of it is so strong that has to close his eyes for a moment; that morning Lou gave it to him for something new to try, and when he’d shuffled into Harry’s room to hit him over the head with a pillow to wake him up, they ended up fucking so quick and hard that Zayn was dizzy with it. Harry wouldn’t stop mouthing at him, holding him so close, like Zayn had flicked a fucking switch in his head that turned them both stir crazy. 

It’s a subconscious thing now, wearing it. He hasn’t thought of that morning for so long, a repressed memory he thought he’d forgotten. Now it’s all he can think about, as he watches the smooth lines of Harry’s shoulders shift beneath his shirt, the white gone a strange blue under the moonlight and the dull street. He falls gracelessly into one of the old chairs, then turns to look at Zayn over his shoulder.

He wonders if Harry is thinking about that morning, too. The way they gasped as they came together. The way Harry rolled them and pressed Zayn down into the sheets and sucked a mark so large into his neck it was almost impossible to conceal. 

“Don’t just stand there,” Harry says. It’s another musing that lands flat in the space between them, the joke in Harry’s eyes not really a joke at all. He looks apprehensive, unsure of himself when he looks away and fiddles with the lip of his cup.  

This is the last place Zayn expected to end up tonight. He never thought he’d see Harry again. Not like this, not close. It’s mind bending just looking at his silhouette. Zayn feels it again, that impending weight, that fuzz that lingers between being asleep and awake. Things flicker back to him in bits and pieces. The room in the Ritz and the tattoo gun buzz and the nights on the bus when they both couldn’t sleep, the blackouts and the stormy fights and broken promises, the soft mornings, the bungalow, that day in Dallas that was so hot they both woke sweating and reaching for each other and Harry smiled as he came, all the mornings just like that, when they were young and dumb and hopelessly in love. 

Here, in this dark, dreary apartment, none of that exists. It’s just them now. Just this once. Just for tonight.

-

Being with Harry was an uphill climb. A hike towards a mountain peak. All the sweat was worth it, earned; all the aches felt good when they stopped to stretch and take a breath. There was much to discover on those winding tracks, nature fecund and plentiful, a ripe fruit for their mouths. Something new to discover at every turn. Something breathtaking at each glance through the trees as they rose higher and higher. Up-up-up. Calves sore and swollen, toes dug into bed sheets, the tip-top of the summit in sight. 

And what a sight, to stand there and see that the whole world was theirs. To twine their fingers and experience the true sublime of a thousand sunsets, a thousand cities, a thousand mornings and nights and versions of themselves that were strung together with a mismatch of string. It would have been so easy to exist there forever, to sit on the mountain top and watch the gradients of the sky change, blue to pink, pink to purple, a navy bruise that folded back into itself and became yellow and orange and then blue again. 

So high up there’s so little air, though. So high up, there’s such a long way to fall. So high up the view is so sublime that they didn’t even think to look back down over the other side of the mountain, to where there wasn’t a mountain at all, not really, just a ledge followed by a steep, terrifying drop back to reality. 

Icarus flew too close to the sun and melted the wax from his wings. He fell into the ocean and got swallowed by all those ever-shifting waves and drowned. 

They stepped off the ledge because they didn’t look down and then it was too late to claw their way back to the top.

Zayn used to think it would be so much easier to look back and see where it all went wrong. Turned out it wasn’t. Turned out it was harder to look back on the things he lived when he was no longer in that place, because it no longer felt like him. Zayn from Bradford wasn’t Zayn from One Direction, and Zayn the mysterious one wasn’t Zayn who loved his friends more than he ever loved himself. Zayn from the hotel in Melbourne who loved Harry wasn’t the same Zayn that let himself drift away. 

The Zayn that spent months locked away in himself when he left the band was none of those people. He was separate, and far away, and it became harder to remember what happened where and when Harry did this or when Zayn said that. It became harder to make sense of what happened, what drugs he’d taken when, which days he had to be forced out of bed, when it all truly started to unravel.

It was like watching a grass-fire burn out of control. Watching it eat up everything in its path without being able to stop it, except Zayn had the matches in his hands, and Harry’s fingers were wet with gasoline, and somewhere along the line they’d slipped into a fugue state and burnt it all to the ground without realizing they were the ones to start the fire. 

Harry was always his number one. Harry was what he clung to, to make it all better. Harry who drifted out to sea for those few months before tour, Harry who loved LA and called Zayn to tell him he missed him and that he couldn’t wait to be on his knees for him again, Harry who covered Zayn’s writing with the laurels because he said he wanted to keep it forever and ever and ever. Harry who was sloppy drunk off caipirinhas and burnt from the Brazilian sun when he stumbled into Zayn’s hotel room with a bag over his shoulder because he just missed him that much, he missed him, didn’t he know he’d missed Zayn so much?

The sex was loud and rough and Harry begged Zayn not to stop, to keep touching, to keep pulling his hair, to do anything he wanted. So Zayn did. He pulled Harry’s hair, so long then, so thick in his fingers, pushed his face down and held his hips and almost cried with how good it was, with how much he’d missed Harry too, with how different this suddenly felt for reasons he couldn’t understand. 

Harry fell asleep afterwards, cheeks still flushed bright pink, pool-damp hair caught in his eyes. Zayn had sighed and brushed it away, pressed a warm kiss to Harry’s temple just for him, and then he’d started to unpack Harry’s things, to hang up his ridiculous shirts so they didn’t get wrinkly overnight because Harry hated that. He’d wear shirts with fucking holes ripped through them but they couldn’t be crinkled, no. And that made Zayn smile, for the first time in a long time, he realized, as he hung those stupid shirts on the hangers while Harry breathed on the bed behind him. _Hum-hum-hum. Keep Harry safe._

He unpacked Harry’s lip balm, plugged his dead phone on to charge, put his moleskine on the nightstand because he’d want to write if he woke up in a few hours, always did when he was still half-drunk and hazy from sex and feeling spiritual. Zayn used to tease him about it, called him a wanker, a wannabe-Bukowski, and Harry always laughed and threw a pillow at Zayn’s head, but then he’d go quiet too, as he wrote, and Zayn had to restrain himself from asking if Harry was writing about him.

That’s how it became, with them. Harry stumbling into his bed and begging Zayn to touch him in ways he hadn’t before, to be rougher, to make it hurt a little. Zayn picking up Harry’s things and putting them in their rightful places. Harry waking up in the middle of the night just to mess them up again, to slide down Zayn’s body and take his cock into his mouth until Zayn’s lip bled from how hard he bit down. 

Harry was always his number one. Harry was his distraction from how much he hated everything about what surrounded them, the music he couldn’t put his heart into, the people who didn’t listen to him, the exhaustion of never being in one place long enough to learn anything about it. Feeling trapped. Feeling overwhelmed with guilt because millions of people loved him but there were only a few people that really knew him. His mum. Louis. 

He always thought Harry knew him the best. 

He doesn’t remember which Zayn and Harry started to fall apart first, who fell apart the most. He can still feel Harry’s wet mouth on his neck, his laughter hidden there when it was late at night and the bus was moving and they’d both smoked together for the first time in what felt like months, and Harry was being philosophical and ridiculous and making Zayn smile, a feeling so distant it almost made his cheeks hurt.

“Listen, listen,” Harry whispered, pages between forefinger and thumb, lips licked wet, a little breath. A soft touch against Zayn’s temple, a kiss there, a memory from years ago. “Look at your eyes. They are small, but they see enormous things.”

“You’re mental,” Zayn whispered back, buried beneath Harry’s muffled laughter. They had to be quiet. It was late, the boys where asleep. The bus murmured _hum-hum-hum_ and then Harry’s mouth went slack and he kissed Zayn so warm, so wet that they both gasped. 

“I’m so happy,” Harry said, then, so quietly that tears sprung to Zayn’s eyes. “Zayn, I’m so happy you’re here, with me. I couldn’t do it without you.”

“Yeah,” Zayn nodded, unsure as to why it felt like the whole world was collapsing in on him, why his chest hurt so fucking much when Harry kissed him again. “You, too.”

“Are you happy?” Harry said. 

Zayn stared at him, at the redness crowding Harry’s sleepy eyes, the most genuine person he’d ever known, Patsy Cline singing about love so low on the floor, right by their socked feet. He wasn’t happy. He was in love. People always seem to lump those things together, but Zayn could always tell them apart. He wasn’t happy, he hadn’t been completely happy for a long time. But he was in love. He was desperately, dangerously and foolishly in love. 

“Yes,” he lied, the first of many. It made Harry smile, and that was a good thing. That was Zayn’s one good thing, that Harry was happy. _Harry-Harry-Harry._

It was months later, when he found the words underlined in one of Harry’s books. Somewhere towards the end of it all. Harry was asleep. The room smelt like sex and Zayn was in the bathroom sitting on the toilet seat with his head in his hands trying not to cry. Harry’s bag was in the corner because that’s where it landed when he flung it off his shoulder and pushed Zayn down onto the sheets. It was habit, when he unzipped it, pulled out the shirts, hung them up. Lip balm. Charger. Moleskine. The book was at the bottom, the cover a little bent from being shoved amongst all those things, and Zayn picked it up and sat on the floor at the foot of the bed.

He hated it when people dog-eared book pages, but Harry did it all the time. So many pages, all with their corners folded. Zayn let them skim between his fingers, eyes catching on pen, on pencil, on circled words. It was poetry. He flicked to the back because whilst he was one of those people that hated dog-earing the pages, he always read the last pages first. And there it was.

_I am so small I can barely be seen.  
How can this great love be inside me?_

_Look at your eyes. They are small,  
but they see enormous things._

Harry had underlined it in soft pencil. Zayn stared down at it and felt his lip tremble. He wiped at his eyes. Turned the pages back roughly so he didn’t have to look. There was more, more little notes and lines, a peek inside Harry’s beautiful mind. Into the thoughts that he had kept Zayn far away from for so long now.

 _The speechless full moon comes out now_ and _till the universe dissolves_ and _the here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness._ It felt so private but also like Zayn had to know, couldn’t live without knowing all these little thoughts. Harry’s breathing was so steady behind him but Zayn felt like his chest was about to burst, not with love, not with happiness. It was so heavy it hurt his ribs. _Love moves away. The light changes. I need more grace than I thought._

Zayn hadn’t cried for a long time. He did, then. So silently, so Harry wouldn’t hear. So Harry wouldn’t wake up, because Harry had dark circles under his eyes and his lips were so chapped and he needed to rest, he needed to feel better. The other boys got over the fact that Harry was the youngest, that Harry got slammed constantly by everything around him just for being the way he was, kind, and gentle, and so overwhelmingly nice. But Harry ran away from things, too, fled conflict like he was running across hot sand.

Perhaps it was cruel that in the beginning, Zayn liked the chase. Harry could never seem to outrun him. Harry slowed down just so Zayn could latch on, and they’d tumble and fall together and the cradle he held Harry in always felt so safe. There was a time where Harry always seemed so safe in Zayn’s arms, and Zayn became blind to that, so blind that by the time he ripped himself away he was a husk of something he didn’t want to be. He was miserable but Harry seemed happy and he was leeching off that, feeding on Harry’s smile and passing it off as his own, but then they drifted and the gaps got bigger and Zayn realized that he was a husk, and that he’d been giving everything he had to Harry on a silver platter.

Harry kept running, and Zayn tried to chase, until finally he started to fall behind from the exhaustion of it. He was on his knees, nothing left. Just dim bones for Harry to gnaw at. To suck the marrow from. 

Zayn cried, read those little printed letters and covered his mouth with his hand and closed his eyes and wondered how it had become so bad. How something so beautiful could be so ugly underneath.

That’s the thing about art, about poetry, about the sublime. It’s not about beauty. It never has been. 

 _Gamble everything for love_  
_if you are a true human being._  
_If not, leave_  
_this gathering._  

-

“What are you working on at the moment?”

“Second album. Nearly there.”

The little balcony is cramped and the gutters are slimy and it’s still drizzling, the cold steel that wraps around them pinging high and soft where the rain hits. The tips of Zayn’s shoes are dotted with water. It’s numbingly cold. Against his wrist, his watch feels like ice, and he envies Harry when he glances over, watches the smooth nubs of his wrist shift as he brings his cup to his mouth. It’s dark, all shadows, and this close the way nighttime muffles their bodies makes Harry look impossibly young. It hurts to look at him, to know that the boy of nineteen is somewhere underneath this new, older Harry.

“That’s good,” Harry nods. “I’ve started writing here and there, but. Tour makes it hard to really settle, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says. 

They’re skirting completely around the fact that they’ve both not listened to each others music. Zayn knows it, because this conversation would be different if Harry had listened to the things Zayn wrote about them. He knows because Harry keeps looking at him like he expects Zayn to bring it up. Zayn never listened to it, couldn’t. He couldn’t bare to hear what Harry had been holding in. 

“It’s nice, being on the road,” Harry continues. He picks at the lip of his cup again. He’s nervous, another one of his ticks. “Playing the little venues felt very nostalgic.”

No. He’s not going to sit here and talk to Harry about nostalgia.

“I think this is the worst small talk I’ve ever heard from you,” Zayn says bluntly, trying to soften it with a weak smile, but Harry huffs a laugh and lets his head fall back, jaw working as he swallows.

“No, you’re right,” Harry says quietly. He rubs a hand over his face, and maybe the small talk would have been better, Zayn realizes. Maybe they should have talked shit about the good ol’ days instead of whatever it is that’s sitting heavily between them now. He’s terrified of Harry’s stillness. 

They don’t speak for a long, long time. The rain picks up. It’s true what they say about New York never sleeping, but the streets are dark and silent, unnaturally so. Zayn can’t feel his fingers. He just stares out into the shadows, up to the foggy sky to search for stars.

“I realized something, a while ago,” Harry finally says, staring down at his lap. Zayn almost flinches at the sound of his voice, his drooping eyes alert. There’s a beat, Harry scratching at his jaw, letting out a soft, apprehensive breath. “I never said I was sorry.”

The small talk definitely would have been better. Infinitely better.

“Harry,” Zayn says, warning.

“No, listen to me,” Harry says, tense as they finally lock eyes. “I never once told you I was sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Zayn says. Harry just stares at him for a moment, unconvinced, before he shakes his head and scoops up their cups, storming inside. 

Zayn rolls his head back, then stands to follow.

“Harry,” he says tiredly, as Harry dumps their drinks into the sink, shoulders tense. “All of that is in the past now–”

“Is it, though?” Harry whirls. “Because we’re both still here, Zayn.”

He gestures to the space between them.

Zayn’s mouth clicks shut, retort dying on his tongue.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s in the past. It feels like I never moved on,” Harry says, trembling slightly under the soft kitchen light. Zayn closes his eyes for a moment. “I think about you all the time. It’s been fucking years and I think about you so often it drives me mad.” 

 _I think about you, too. Every day._ Instead, he says, “I should go.”

“Don’t,” Harry begs. “Don’t, because then it’ll be another two years until I see you again, and another two after that. I’m sick of it.”

“This is insane,” Zayn says, taking in a shallow breath. 

Harry comes closer, and his eyes are wet. “I hurt you so much,” he whispers. Zayn looks away. “I hurt you so much and I didn’t even realize it. But you hurt me, too. We broke each other and it wasn’t okay and I’m done pretending it never happened.”

“Don’t you understand that I never wanted to hurt you?” Zayn says, paper thin. “But I couldn’t keep hurting myself in the process. I was ruining myself, and you watched. You just stood back and watched.”

“I had to think about the band–”

“Fuck the band!” Zayn bursts. “Fuck the band, Harry! I just wanted you, but that wasn’t enough. You saw how bad it was and you never said _anything._ Maybe I left and maybe it fucked things up, but I couldn’t do it anymore. You were long gone before I got on that plane.”

“Listen to yourself,” Harry breathes, shaking his head. “You don’t fucking get it, do you? There were so many people relying on us for their jobs, Zayn. So many people counting on us. I didn’t want to leave. I loved that band, I still do, and just because _you_ didn’t, doesn’t make it any less important. Why can’t you understand that I loved you and the band all at once? Why couldn’t you just see that?”

“Fuck you,” Zayn says, heat burning behind his eyes, fingers shaking.

“No, Zayn,” Harry continues. “I’m standing here, trying to fucking apologize to you, because I know I should have tried harder. You’re right. I should have been there for you. I should have cared more for you than anything to do with the band, but you never met me halfway, either. You disregarded _everything_ that I cared about if it had nothing to do with you, and that isn’t fair. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you I’m sorry until my gums fucking bleed, Zayn. But please don’t stand there and pin every single shitty thing you’ve ever felt on me. Don’t.”

Harry’s face is wet, and Zayn can feel the tickle of his own tears on his chin, leaking down and dropping onto the front of his suit. It’s so constricting, all the sudden, being in this boxy apartment, in these tight clothes, face to face with a boy he never thought he’d get to see again.

“I’m so sorry,” Harry says, and his voice hiccups, fingers wrung together. “There’s no way I could ever understand what you went through, because I never even asked. There’s no excuses for anything. I can only say that I’m sorry. Sorry that I didn’t ask you if you were okay as often as I should have, sorry that I just let you drift away without holding on. I’m sorry I never said anything until it was too late. I was selfish, and I loved you, and I didn’t want you to leave me behind.”

“Harry, stop,” Zayn chokes out. He can’t look, can hardly breathe. _I loved you. I loved you. I loved you._

“No,” Harry says, chin lifted. “You have to know, because I didn’t tell you back then and it ruined everything. This is me trying to fix it.”

“It can’t be fixed.”

“Then we throw it away and start again,” Harry says fiercely, eyes shining. “I’d throw everything out the fucking window if it meant I could touch you one more time.”

Just for tonight. Just for now.

Zayn stalks forward and knocks their mouths together. 

-

Paris. 

 _Paris-Paris-Paris._ Paris, city of light, of love. Paris with her padlocks and her cigarettes and the contrails in the pink sky. Sunset in the Seine a painting all in it’s own, then darkness, then light, so many lights, white and blue and bright gold, bright-bright-bright and so high up in the sky. A sugary, summery dream. Humidity at night. Dark, dirty Paris, black cats and berets and low candle light. 

Oh, Paris. So many sounds, so many _hum-hum-hums_ to fill up the gaping holes in the room. To fill the gaping holes between those two shaking bodies.

“I hate you,” one said to the other. Paris, the city of light, but inside it was so dark. 

“You don’t.” 

The bodies moved together, inside one another, so physically close but so far apart. Sweat, caught on the lip. A tear caught on a lash. A tear between mouths. A tear for July and summertime and knowing they’d soon have to part again. 

“I can’t go back,” one said to the other. “How am I supposed to go back?”

“Stay.” 

_Stay, stay, stay._

Just for that moment, they were indistinguishable. It didn’t matter who said what. Both of them could have said anything, absolutely anything, and the other was already thinking it. They were just two bodies, two disconnected selves, because this wasn’t supposed to happen. Zayn who left and Harry who kept going were never supposed to cross paths again. 

And then they came, more tears between mouths, and like being slammed back into existence, the wind knocked from their chests, all the colours and sounds around them came back into the light. Harry’s legs over Zayn’s shoulders, their noses brushing, wide-eyed and terrified like that moment was the first they’d seen of each other since they’d screamed the hotel down months ago. Like Harry didn’t unlock the door and see Zayn smoking by the balcony. Like they didn’t clutch at each other and say _why-why-why_ and _I miss you_ and _this isn’t fair_ and _please fuck me I need you I can’t breathe without you anymore._

That was before. This was after. 

“ _God,_ ” Harry said, chest heaving as he sat up and put his head in his hands. “This is so fucked up. This is beyond fucked up.”

“I didn’t think you’d be here,” Zayn said, and it was true, because One Direction were still touring without him. Harry was supposed to be on a flight to North America, but instead he was at the Ritz, and so was Zayn, because they’d planned to run away together and they booked the suite what felt like years ago, and Zayn still wanted to run.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Harry said, palms to his eyes as he started to cry.

“Please, don’t,” Zayn whispered, pulling him in, and Harry let him, collapsed into Zayn’s neck so bonelessly they fell back into the soft sheets. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Harry said sharply. “Look at us, Zayn.”

Zayn looked. Their bare legs tangled, come drying on their stomachs. The beautiful suite that surrounded them. The pillows wet with tears. Across the room, furniture knocked out of place from when they’d struggled towards the bed. Harry was right. It wasn’t okay, because now they had to go, and Zayn was sick of them leaving each other. Sick of being empty. Sick of hating himself. 

He’d hurt Harry again when he was supposed to keep him safe, and Harry hurt him, too. 

“I don’t want to do this without you,” Harry whispered between them. “I miss you too much.”

_You were doing it without me long before I left. You’ve always been so good. You’re a star. My star. My Harry._

“It’s what’s best,” Zayn said, drawing light patterns over the smooth skin of Harry’s back. His hair was so long. Zayn still loved him. He couldn’t hurt him anymore. “We have to move on.”

He never wanted to move on.

-

There are still things, even now, years later, that he wishes he did differently. There are still things that keep him up at night.

But this, Zayn can do. This is what he knows.

It’s natural for him to touch fervent along Harry’s face, to dip his thumb past Harry’s parted lips and find that he’s warm and spit-slick inside, to tug a little because it always makes Harry’s eyes go glassy and his cheeks go pink, makes his lips gloss red and so _wet_ when Zayn swipes his now silky thumb over them. He tugs and pulls and plays because it makes Harry go limp, turns his limbs and his expression lax like honey, body golden and sweet and so tan against the white sheets, so flushed just for Zayn and only Zayn. 

He whines so gently and plants his heels down and presses up, and Zayn tugs at the corner of his mouth again, slower, firmer, watching for that exact reaction, not wanting to miss it, feeling the heat that scorches between his hips when Harry’s lashes flutter and he shifts, pulls and palms at Zayn’s arse to try and drag him closer, up his chest, his lashes going sticky wet with what Zayn knows so well as want, a want to have that weight in his mouth, and there’s nothing else in the world that makes Zayn keen, makes him _throb_ as much as being wanted by Harry, wanted so intimately, so close, so _much_ that the heads of their cocks are slippery together, flushed in that same way Harry’s cheeks shine, and Zayn is so weak for him, would do anything for him despite it all, can do nothing but crawl up Harry’s body and let his cock brush those parted lips, hook his thumb and pull at them again and feel himself passing into the silky wet of Harry’s waiting mouth, tears glossing his eyes from the drunken, heady desperation of this moment. 

All breath leaves his chest as he settles a hand in Harry’s hair, the other on the headboard, and even that in itself brings tears to his eyes, just feeling the softness of his hair again, being able to touch him like this. Harry holds so tightly to him, just takes it all as Zayn fucks his hips forward, head thrown back. It’s fervent and hot, his mouth still tingling from how firmly they kissed each other, the way he backed Harry against the wall only to be thrown down into the sheets, for Harry to tear his suit right off his body and beg Zayn to touch him. 

“God,” Zayn chokes, twisting his fingers in Harry’s hair to make him moan, and he does, somewhere deep in his chest. “That’s it. That’s it.”

Harry’s cheeks are wet, tears streaming, so fucking beautiful that Zayn comes before he can catch himself, back bowing with the force of it, Harry’s eyes fluttering closed, hands tight on Zayn’s thighs. Zayn is boneless when he falls back into the sheets, lax and loopy when Harry crawls over him and licks into his mouth, both of them so short of breath that they rasp between each slide of their lips. 

“Fuck me,” Harry says, hips rocking down desperately. 

“Harry–”

“Please,” Harry whispers, almost a sob when Zayn reaches to clumsily slide his fingers down. “ _Please._ ”

“ _Ssh, ssh,_ ” Zayn breathes, bites at Harry’s jaw to keep him quiet, knuckles pressed to his hole. His entire body shakes at the thought, of having Harry like that, being able to press him open and become so close after so much time apart. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Harry grits out, jerking himself off, knuckles knocking against Zayn’s stomach with the motion. It’s so familiar that Zayn almost cries, almost makes Harry stop so they can just curl under the sheets and pretend they’re back in that awful bus, curtains closed, just them against the whole world. 

It’s messy, frantic, and there’s so much lube between them when Zayn finally fucks inside, so wet, so much, Harry with his fingers curled in the pillow so hard it must hurt, saliva shining his mouth and his chin as he pants. Zayn drapes himself over the smooth skin of his back and pulls him into a lush kiss, all tongue, all raw feeling, and _God_ , he’s missed him. He’s missed him so fucking much.

“Harder,” Harry whispers, a slur into the sheets, eyes closed. He’s starting to flush, Zayn’s favourite thing, rosy on the tip of his nose and along the tops of his cheeks. He used to tell him, _look at you, so pretty, babe, so fucking hot for me._ Zayn says nothing now, just slips his fingers back into Harry’s hair and tugs as he thumps into him, pulls until Harry is crying out and shifting back, the sound of it absolutely fucking _obscene_ , the desperate slap of skin on skin, their wet moans and the rain. 

He pulls until Harry is up on his elbows, up on his hands, until he shifts back so he’s on Zayn’s lap, soft thighs splayed either side of Zayn’s, head tipped back. The angle is so much better this way. Zayn can’t stop touching him, digging in, cupping a hand under Harry’s jaw, on his neck, not applying pressure, just holding him there. It makes Harry go mad, fucking himself back harder, and Zayn can’t help it when he presses his mouth to his neck and whispers into his skin, _so good, babe, so fucking good, look how gorgeous you are, so tight, yes, yes, yes._

“Zayn,” Harry gasps out. Over and over. Like a prayer. 

Their mouths find each other, so clumsy. They can’t kiss, both of them moving too fervently, but it’s so nice to just have the drag of Harry’s lips there, to feel him on his chin and his cheek, head lolled back against Zayn’s the closer he gets, limbs going lax, cherry mouth parted. The flush is on his chest now. He’s so close. 

“Touch me,” Harry sobs. “Please, Zayn. Touch me.”

So Zayn does, plays with Harry’s nipples with one hand, starts to jerk him off with the other, cock wet and leaking, blushed dark. He’s beautiful, the most beautiful thing. Zayn’s eyes are hot. 

Harry comes with a broken moan, spilling all over Zayn’s fist, up his stomach, tears beading in the corners of his eyes, and Zayn follows, holds Harry as close as he can to try and stop himself from shaking so much. Harry collapses forward, pulling Zayn with him. And. He still loves him, he knows it. It’s terrifying, what he would do to keep Harry here, to never let him go again. 

He almost says it, with his face pressed against the smooth plane of skin between Harry’s shoulder blades. _I love you. I never stopped. I’ve loved you forever, before I even knew my own name._

“Okay?” Zayn says, because he has to know. Harry’s face is wet, still, turned into the sheets as he breathes.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing thickly, and Zayn leans up to kiss his temple, over his jaw. He can’t stop, he doesn’t want to stop. He’s too scared of what’s going to happen if they stop. “Zayn.”

Harry shifts onto his side, lips and eyes puffy, his cheeks dark red. Zayn kisses him quiet, keeps it soft, keeps his jaw lax so Harry can press his tongue close, the two of them curling up on their sides. It’s still raining. They left the balcony door open. Each time they part Zayn tastes the clouds and the city, tastes something blue, and then it’s Harry, it’s warmth and his own come and that familiar boy hidden between the gaps of his teeth. 

As the quiet settles around them, breaths slowing, limbs going like honey, Zayn tries to ignore the weight in his chest. Harry is blinking at him sleepily. It’s so quiet in the tiny room. He can hear Harry’s heartbeat, but maybe it’s just his own pulse. Things are melting together. He wants to cry so suddenly the feeling shakes him, and it’s never been like this before.

Not when he found Harry hunched in a ball by the fire escape, smoking that first cigarette. Not when he held Harry down and tattooed those words to his hips, when he let Harry do the same in turn. Not when they kissed for the first time in the bungalow and in the hotel and with Patsy Cline singing about love between their socked feet. Not when they realized they loved each other. Not when Zayn cried because Harry still believed in him, even when Zayn didn’t see it, even when it was falling apart. Not when Harry found Zayn passed out in a pool of his own vomit, so thin and frail, and promised not to tell even through his tears.

But that was then. This is now.

“Am I going to see you again?”

The swell rushes in, seeps through the cracks. 

They’ve known each other forever, yet they’ve never truly met. Who are we when the invisible string that connects the consciousness together is cut loose.

The body of water remains, but the pattern never settles the same.

Maybe that’s the point. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> eep. please let me know what u think!! as i said i've never written zarry before so i'm a nervous mess about this one. here's the [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/gonewilde/playlist/3yYYaXDypBvCY26hxyzPAG?si=AnUpQ4ffTdK1cQBVtV07YQ) and a lil [post](http://fondleeds.tumblr.com/post/173798511780/dissolve-by-fondleeds-he-doesnt-remember-the) if u wanna reblog.
> 
> thank u for reading and being the best ♡♡♡


End file.
